Saturday, April 19, 2014

It's been a while since I've posted, and I want to write something, but I don't have a prompt. So I'm going to just go ahead and spill the contents of my brain onto this blog post. Ready go.

The reason the world is all fucked up is that we don't really value virtues like honesty and character. We glorify attributes like success regardless of its cost, which is often integrity. If people can get away with lying or bending the truth, they're encouraged. There's no real accountability, and no honesty. People fuck things up like the environment or an ecosystem, take as much as they can, and then ignore their conscience that says quietly "hey. shithead. don't do that. that's not right." Without that voice, people take all sorts of liberties, hurting others, lying, bending the truth, rigging systems, taking what hasn't been given to them, and generally causing imbalance and pain. It's not a failure of religion; it's a failure of society.

Part of the reason for the lack of virtues is that we don't have any allegiance to our communities--no pride. We don't feel responsible to be good people because we don't feel like anything bad will happen, and we don't feel guilty because we don't know the people we're fucking over. Our societies are overcrowded and we don't have ways to meet naturally in safe, wholesome environments. Our meeting places--bars, clubs--are too goal-oriented and the alcohol brings out people's sexual needs rather than their social needs. How many of us actually know our neighbors? How many people in your neighborhood have you eaten with? This isn't a failure of people; it's a failure of urban planning.

Lots of us are single, and even people that aren't single are probably living like they are, in the sense of how alone they feel deep down. It's even worse when you're in a relationship and you feel lonely. As a therapist, I've run into a lot of clients who've shared the same story structure. Bad relationships all resemble each other because their architecture is fundamentally identical. The story is this: people are happy. They get into a relationship and it's exciting. Then they start to feel self-conscious. They try and bury it or ignore it, but deep down, it's there. It makes them unhappy, and they start to identify traits in their partner that they believe is triggering their unhappiness. It is triggering, but the unhappiness was already there. It's there because people think they're going to get kicked away when someone realizes they're not that great.

The antidote is simple: kindness. Look at your experience carefully and you see that fear preys on desperation: a nervous and flighty mind. You can't have desperation where your heart is open. Your instinct is just to accept and help and stay calm. True kindness--when you're just helping without trying to get recognition--whether public or private--is the kind of action that opens hearts and changes the way you process the world.